Rumor Driven Campaigns

While I am not against running modules in D&D, truth be known that I prefer them a little bit more than creating my own whole cloth just because I admit to being as lazy as I am, I still run the occasional arc of my campaigns as a more free form, let the players decide what they are doing. To this end, I give each of the players a rumor that is more often than not pertinent to their PC and let them hash out which of the rumors they are following. Take the campaign I am running as I type this - the party needs a level or two worth of side quests before they start up the next major arc, so I gave each PC a rumor (plot hook) that was pertinent to that PC, and let the party decide which way they are going to go. The party pulled out all of their rumors, shared them with the party, and settled on the one that sounded the most interesting to them, and away we went. While this was going on, and also while I am currently about halfway through the side quest they chose, I have realized a few things about this style of running that will make this style of DM'ing more engaging and entertaining for your players.

The side quest my group decided on was the Underdark adventure. They had five total rumors to choose from - diplomatic mission, trade caravan protection, backstory driven quest, local spy ring and weapons smuggling, or the Underdark - and the party decided to find out what the "rumblings in the Deep, something is moving in the dark..." is all about. Most of these rumors I basically picked what I thought was a neat bad guy or group of baddies to fight - a skull lord, a necromancer and a mess of shadows, a large pack of werewolves - and then created a rumor they could follow to get to said baddie(s). Really barebones stuff here, just a quick idea, a rumor to lead into it, and then flesh it out only after the party has chosen to follow that quest. What I have learned at this stage of the adventure creation is to look not only at the main baddie, but also who they are using as minions, who is a threat to the baddie in their natural habitat and how they interact, and any other interested parties that might be involved. If you are a player in my group, go away and come back in a couple of months after we have completed this side quest.

Gone? Good. So the "rumblings in the deep" is an aboleth, not the illithid like my party originally feared (still chose to go into the Underdark in the first place), and the aboleth is controlling a bunch of kuo toa (or they believe it is their new god), who are using quaggoth to wipe out a tribe of troglodytes who live close to where the party has discovered an entrance to the Underdark in a previous arc of this campaign, so that the kuo toa and by extension the aboleth have better access to the surface and potential mind slaves. The aboleth is a fantastic monster, and extra creepy due to the mind control powers, plus being nigh immortal, if the fight starts to tilt out of their favor, they just swim away and set up shop somewhere else. Also, they are not known for being big on physical belongings, and my party, having played in two campaign arcs I transferred over from 3.5e to 5e have more than enough goodies for their level. The kuo toa are another interesting choice, being weird god creators and also a monster which you can generally parley with as they are more interested in capturing you instead of outright killing you. Also, any changes to the aboleth's power block I can explain away as the effects of the kuo toa worshipping it. The quaggoth and the trogs are just your average Underdark grist monsters, they are there to kill or hide from or avoid or ignore as the party sees fit, and in any other setting would be a couple of other common monsters like goblins and orcs, or kobolds and bugbears, but they are Underdark dwellers so here they are. Pretty basic. However, looking into the kuo toa further thanks to the DungeonCast podcast (particularly this episode), I learned the kuo toa eat mainly underground dwelling fish and mushrooms. Who lives in the Underdark and are excellent mushroom farmers? Why myconids, of course, and I also learned that kuo toa are notorious slavers and lazy, so in the middle of the last session I decided that the kuo toa have captured some myconids (no sovereign) and the aboleth is slowly turning the whole clan into willing slaves for his kuo toa worshippers. This is a great opportunity for the players to do some role playing - do they save the mushroom-folk or slay them along with all of the other weird monsters down in the Deep? If they do spare them, do they negotiate a peace with them and ask them to move into the Shallows near their home area and begin trade with the surface? I also looked around the Monster Manual, wondering what could be a threat to an aboleth and came up with a purple worm - higher CR, bestial level intellect so immune to the kuo toa's and the aboleth's mind control abilities, and since it is mostly a mindless beast, it will strike at anyone be they in the party or not. 

The aboleth was the seed. The kuo toa were the next step back towards and between the party and the big bad, and the quaggoth are crunchy pawns that the party has faced before, though at a much lower level so they felt threatened until the players realized how easily they were scything through them. The troglodytes were an issue, as they were just not relatable enough. You kind of felt sorry they were being wiped out by the quaggoth and the kuo toa, but then you remembered that no one wants a tribe of troglodytes near their cities and villages, and you stopped caring. But I could not replace them with myconids, too many moving parts to get the party into contact with them peaceably, all while the myconids are being wiped out by overwhelming forces if I had merely put them in the trogs' place in the game. So having the trogs as fodder no one cares about and setting up the myconids as prisoners/mind slaves that could later be rescued and dealt with diplomatically is the better way to go, after all. The purple worm is just a goad, an overwhelming force that if the party faces it head on will kill some if not all of them, so I can use it to guide the party around. A bit, a small bit, but a bit is better than nothing. The party had been very cautious approaching the kuo toa warren, and I needed something to force them to get there more directly - sneak in, bust in swords swinging, something - plus if the party is smart, they will figure a way to use the worm to their advantage, as I said before, the worm is a mindless beast and will attack anything it comes across. And it is always fun to, without warning, drop in such a large creature on the party and one they cannot simply punch to solve. 

What was learned in all that was the addition of the myconids and the purple worm. The original seed for the adventure just had the troglodytes, the quaggoth, the kuo toa and the aboleth. But looking farther afield and adjusting the adventure mid-stream to include these other monsters from the environment really fleshed out this story, and will give my players a lot more opportunity to role play instead of just rolling dice and killing monsters. Yet, you have to be careful and not expand it too much. I definitely did not need to also include the drow, the duergar, the derro, Zuggtmoy, the mind flayers, and the githyanki/githzerai. Yes, they could have been added in, I could have led from this side quest into a major campaign arc that involved all of those, but since we are not headed in that direction, I left them out. Too much is too much, and while my original plan for this quest would have worked, it would not have worked quite as well, so I am glad I changed up my plans.

The other takeaway I got from trying out this rumor-based series of side quests and letting the party choose their path is that I realized that in addition to the multiple rumors, I needed to also decide what would be the consequence of not following each of those rumors. The consequences do not all need to be dire, or even considered detrimental, but something has to result from the party not chasing down that rumor. Remember, each of your rumors do not necessarily need to be mutually exclusive, maybe salt in a few smaller side quests that could be taken on, where the bigger ones do not allow any of the other side quests to even be attempted. For the consequences, these range from another local party takes them on and succeeds or fails, all the way up to something unpleasant has happened and now the party's next campaign arc is resolving that issue. For this stage in my current campaign, I am sticking with mostly minor consequences - the diplomatic meeting with the neighboring country almost ends in disaster but is saved by a rival adventuring party; the werewolf pack retreats away from civilization due to the party's next plot hook showing up; that strange town along the trade route goes oddly quiet as does the last trade caravan headed that way, and one of the PC's significant other, a member of the local militia, is sent to investigate along with their fellow troops; and the cultists do manage to capture one of the former party members for their grimoire (part of their background), but the local constabulary apprehend the would be kidnappers and everything is well. Of course, the consequences of not following these rumors is low because the rewards of almost all of these rumors is likewise low - a character level, an opportunity to do some character development, maybe a boost through some backstory relativity, and a chance to get in some role playing. With such low stakes and rewards, you do not want to run an entire campaign off of them, it would quickly grow too boring, but for quick, interlude type side quests, these lower reward/consequence side quests are perfect. And they are so easy to whip together, you could set up a table like a random encounter table, and roll to see what your rumors are, if you want to be truly lazy about it. 

Which brings up another question to my mind - could you run an entire level one to twenty campaign solely off the rumors model? I am thinking yes, but if you want to truly run it that way and have an overarching plot that ties it all together, you will need to set up your decision trees beforehand. Just watch any of the making of documentaries on open world computer RPGs, you will get the gist of what is involved. And looking at a recent Wizards of the Coast campaign setting release, Eberron: Rising from the Last War, they have provided plenty of plot hooks tied to both organizations and geographical locations you can practically run your Eberron campaign from those plot hooks. They do not really provide any solid overarching plots, though, you will have to come up with that one on your own. Reminds me of what I have seen from computer RPGs, at least the "making of" documentaries about them. 

Airberron Musings

Here I sit, cooped up by the COVID-19, or the CORVID-19 as I have seen on one misspelled sign, and instead of working on the Roll20-ification of my current campaign, I am busy hacking away at my keyboard getting my Airberron campaign ready. Which I will need roughly 2 years from now, at the rate we are going. Ah well, such is life, and running a D&D campaign is a bit of an art-form in the sense that when the Muse strokes your brain, you follow it and write down as much as you can.

In broad strokes, then, here is the setting. I had originally planned on doing a very detailed worldbuild on Airberron, but remembered - or was reminded by some more experienced GMs, to be honest - that much like writing fiction, your world just needs some highlights and you can fill in the details later as the game goes on. Unless you're preparing your world to share with others, which I am kind of doing, but as this is a modification of an extant campaign setting instead of a new creation, I realized that just hitting the highlights will suffice. 

Of course, you already know about the major change from Eberron - the Change that ended the Last War and brought about the Mournland, well, in Airberron it changed the entire face of the world. All continents (as far as everyone knows) lifted from the face of the planet and are now floating in the air. Some floated higher, some stayed lower, but all lifted off the face of the planet.

The next big change from the setting that, in response to the continents floating into the air, the Changelings all took on the form of Aarakocra. To me, this fit far better with the setting of Airberron and also because I always found the Changelings to be rather meh. Ooh, it's a secret race that no one knows about (except all the players and by meta-extension, their characters), which guarantees that every Changeling PC will come with more backstory than your average Wiki entry. That feels strange, using a comparison to Wikipedia instead of an actual, printed encyclopedia, but who knows what an encyclopedia is these days? Anyway, you know how I feel about PC backstory, and this fantastic article proves that, but is also why I'm paring down my wotldbuilding backstories as well. Managed to get rid of one class I definitely did not care for and added a class with flying, which will be most helpful on a world where the landmasses are all in the air.

Other race changes from the core book - I put on my big boy undies and once again outlawed Dragonborn. Come on, the dragons of Eberron are mysterious figures who rarely contact any of the "lesser" races openly, the world is steeped in dragon lore and mythology, so no, I am allowing none of their relatives to be played by the PCs. The original Eberron setting in 3.5 stated explicitly no dragon characters, partly because there were no Dragonborn until 4e, but they did have half-dragons (let us be honest, half-dragons are the same thing as Dragonborn, and made a lot more sense) in that original edition and what that version was referring to. Now in 5e, WotC is loathe to tell the players "no", so they waffled and said if you spun your backstory right, you could have Dragonborn. I am not a waffler, however, so no Dragonborn. Also no Tieflings, and no Drow, there is plenty to see and do in this campaign setting, you do not need to try and recreate Drizzt Do'urden or play another "race of the week" from 4th edition. Warforged, since the world has changed, can turn in their natural armor ability to get wings and a flying movement speed. That one just made sense to me, and would allow another PC race to come with the ability to fly. And we are discounting all the other spare races from Xanathar's Guide, because the main Eberron book does, which is also fine by me. 

The next bits are less world setting related and more neat things that I have run across that I am incorporating in the campaign going forward. First up is backstory connections. In my current campaign, I am using what would be called a framing device in the literary world to help bring the party together and give them direction. In Eberron terms, the party has the option to have a patron, which in my own world is a government run agency much like the Musketeers were to France in our own history. Why not stick with that? Well, even after telling my players this is what is going to happen, some of them still insisted on making the most unlikable, narcissistic, team hating edgelords they could. (it is not all that bad, but sometimes it feels like they are being disagreeable on purpose, and I want to strangle them - this is a cooperative game and not your personal piece of fanfic!) This connections idea I got from a recent video I watched about character creation in the Traveller RPG, and when I realized what a neat bit of party creation it was, it also made me realize how well it puts the onus of getting the party together on the shoulders of the players. Basically the idea is this - every player decides with the other players what connections in the past each PC has. Each PC has a connection with two other PCs, and if you have more than 3 players, each set of connections is unique, and if a PC has a connection to another PC, they can not share their other PC connection. Each player (in conjunction with the other players) decides what the connection is and when it occurred in the past, and uses their background, not their character class, to help define the connection. For example - the acolyte hung out with the sage, the acolyte as they were taking their rites in the church and the sage while they were studying at whatever institute of higher learning they were at, and they partied like the world was ending. That was five years ago. The sage got into a bit of debt with the local crime syndicate, and the criminal was the one who had to come around and collect the weekly payment and any interest owed. This was two years ago. The criminal got waylaid along the highway (irony) and was helped out by the soldier when their troop of cavalry happened by. This was last year. And the soldier is cousin to the acolyte. Four PCs, each with two connections, all unique, but they quickly and simply describe how the party knows each other and gives just enough of a backstory for the players to build on. Hell, you could even just use Eberron's patronage section of the rules and skip all that, but my players will have to decide together how this is going to work.

The other thing I am adding into future campaigns is a few tables from Xanathar's Lost Notes to Everything Else, a little fan-made product over on the GM's Guild store. I say "fan-made", but it is written by some of the biggest names in the fan community, not so much professionals themselves as they are top seeded amateurs. Anyway, I like the Lingering Injuries table in the DMG, so I am definitely using the expanded table from Lost Notes. In addition, while I have been using Seth Skorkowsky's critical hits and fumble tables in my current campaign, they are just overpowered for most 5e campaigns. However, I still like having more options beyond just "you crit'ed, double your damage", so I will also be using the expanded crit and fumble tables, also from Lost Notes. The one thing I am surprised at with Lost Notes is how badly in need of an editorial pass it is. At least the copy I have has many small grammar issues, and maybe they have updated it - it is mainly a digital product with print on demand dead tree versions also available - so I may just have to redownload my copy to correct them. It does remind me that even the semi-professionals need to pay more attention to their grammar and editorial passes. I have been typing most of my recent blog posts, especially this one, on my phone and not on my computer, so I need to pay close attention to what autocorrect is doing to my words. 

Telling Your Players "No"

Ah yes, I can already hear the unceasing cries of people who do not actually run tabletop RPGs - "you can't say NO to your players! you have to say YES, and empower their creative juices!" Feh, spare me.

One of my players - one which I am sure all of us GM/DM/Storyteller/Referees/whatnot have at our tables - had come to me in 2 consecutive almost sessions of our D&D game with some requests for his character I have outright said "no" to. I say "almost sessions" because my group had been recovering from the year end holiday doldrums, schedule interruptions, and bad weather phenomenons, and we had not had a real session in quite a while. As has become usual when we do meet, we sit around and kibitz instead of actually playing, waiting for players who do not show, so we had "almost sessions". Anyway, this player of mine asked first to receive the effects of a powerful spell to simulate lycanthropy in his character, and then asked, for our next campaign, to bring in a powerful weapon from a video game into our next campaign. I said no to both... well, I said "no", but the player kept droning on about both requests for so long, that I turned it into "I'll think about it", but the answer will still end up being "no". But that was merely my answer at first glance, a gut-level dismissal that at the time I had problem explaining the full logic behind, part of the reason I let my player argue me into "I'll think about it". Now, after having time to chew on it a bit, I have better reasons for saying "no", and this may be a reasoned, logical explanation, or it just may be weaseling my way out of telling my player "yes", you can decide for yourself.

The first request - due to the PC's backstory, my player thought his character should be given the powers of a werewolf. My first response was, okay, but those creatures in my world are not nice and basically without going through a lot of other rituals and training, anytime you turn into your wolf-man form, you give your character to me. And he will be evil, more of a danger to the rest of the party than a boon (if you want to play a "nice" werewolf, go play White Wolf's World of Darkness game Werewolf the Apocalypse, but no, do not do that either, those games are not sensical). No wait, argued my player, this character's family has learned to control the evil-ness and so you (meaning me, the DM) should allow this non-wizard, less than 11th level PC to have the effect of the Tenser's Transformation spell for free. Obviously I have several reservations about this line of reasoning, to include the whole backstory schtick and the getting the upside without earning it or having any downside attached to it, and I am not quite sure which one gets my hair up more. Character backstories in general have always been a bugaboo for me as a DM. Should every PC have a backstory? Yes, but especially for low level characters, it should be short and it should not affect the campaign unless the DM is mining it for side quest ideas. Long, convoluted backstories may be great works of fiction (and I am guilty of writing a few "novellas" in backstories myself) and entertaining reads, but when a player starts inflicting such works on the game, trying to steer the campaign away from what the group wants or what the DM has prepared, or using the backstory as an excuse to get free, unearned powers, that is when the backstory has to go. What happens in the backstory should only inform a player (and the rest of the table) where their PC comes from and what their motivations are, but it should never, ever be used to replace earning a power or ability or skill away from the table, nor should it be the explanation for why a PC gets said power and another PC does not. Yes, this ties in with why I think Warlocks in 5e are not a well thought out class. Then add on top of it the player wants his PC to have this cool thing without having earned it and with none of the downsides (either werewolf antagonism if counted as a lycanthrope, or playing a mage to level 11 to get the spell in the first place) just because he wrote a bit of fiction. The answer is still "no", though I have been a good DM and dangled a sidequest in front of the party where said PC could run into werewolves, contract the virus, and then partake another series of sidequests and downtime trainings to control his evil, beastly nature, but that would mean he, the PC, would have to explain his backstory to the rest of the party so they will agree to undertake said sidequest, but he is very reticent to do this. Why that is a sticking point with the player, I have no idea, as he is all too willing to inflict said fiction on me. I think a lot of this is boredom from the player with his character, but the party and especially this player wants to see a full level one to twenty run in this campaign, and so the player is just going to have to suck it up and keep playing the character as is.

I found this in a recent article about worldbuilding, but it is very apt about backstories:
The thing is that worldbuilding is to a campaign what backstory is to a player-character. And I realize that, by saying that, I’m inviting arguments from all the snowflake players who love to hand the GM ten pages of Mary Sue backstory crap. But I’ve already heard them all. I’ve heard the “creative expression” argument and the “it helps me play my character better” argument and all the rest. And no. It doesn’t. But you can’t see it because you’re more interested in writing fanfiction about your awesome character than you are about playing an interactive game with other people.

Very appropriate to the discussion at hand.

The other thing this player was wanting was to bring some ridiculous, anime-inspired weapon into our next campaign. With the release of the Eberron campaign setting and my Airberron conversion, it is very likely we will play that next for our medieval fantasy setting (Cyberpunk Red is due out within the next year, so I may begin running a second campaign for that), and the arcanepunk setting of Eberron has convinced my player he can get totally ridiculous when we finally start playing it. No, while I do know which video game the proposed weapon comes from I will not be sharing that, as it does not matter. I have totally forgotten which weapon he was requesting because it does not matter which one it was and I do not play that game, so I really do not have enough interest in the idea. The basic problem I have with this is twofold - the weapon is far too powerful for even the Eberron setting and if you want something really cool from that video game, just play that video game. Again, it smacks too much to me like wanting a large power or skill or ability without the work, but as powerful as this weapon is, even if the player and party spent all 20 levels of that campaign researching and gathering the parts and then building said weapon, it would overbalance the game. Even at 20th level, where most PCs retire and call it quits, it would still overbalance the game, but the player talked like he wanted this early in the game, like the first 10 levels, and that this would again be something that would not be fully earned in game not have any downsides. On top of all of that is the fact that even with Eberron's airships and lightning rail trains and other arcanepunk accoutrements, this weapon is so ridiculous (what I have long been calling "anime bullshit") that it just does not fit into the theme and feel of the world. If the player wanted to do a full conversion of this video game (or find one online... yep, quick Google search shows me they are out there), I would allow the weapon - it would fit the power level and it would fit the theme of the setting. But I still would be loathe to run the conversion as D&D is fantastic at portraying the settings you generally find for it, that is to say generic medieval high-magic fantasy with some few exceptions, and little else. I like D&D, obviously, but I would hate to run a dystopic cyberpunk or scifi or many other possible settings using D&D rules - believe me, I have tried, like the d20 version of Star Wars. For fans of video games like this one, though, it would not hold a candle to just playing the video game itself, just would not be as fun or entertaining. It does not help that said video game has almost zero story, so besides the combat there is not anything in that setting that is compelling to play. Again, this is a "no". 

Back to backstories, in addition to the aforementioned "anime bullshit" weapons grab (no, it is a medieval fantasy game, you cannot have a tactical nuclear weapon), this same player declared that he is "calling it", he will play the Artificer in our future Airberron game, and already has this complicated backstory as to why this Artificer character has a rocket maul and a prosthetic arm. First off, said player has forgotten that he will be rolling randomly for his stats, so he may not get anything that resembles an Artificer - I have adopted the idea that your first character in a campaign is a bit Fate touched, for the whole party, and you roll your stats in the order they appear on the official WotC character sheet (STR, DEX, CON, INT, WIS, CHA) to see what Fate has brought you. Fate the intangible force that screws up or improves our lives, not the RPG rules system, thank you very much. Second, it has been a great while since I have played or run any Eberron games, I do not know if a rocket maul and a prosthetic limb are items that a first level PC would have, maybe they do, but again this smacks of trying to get something for nothing by writing a bit of fiction. Not to mention that if this story is worth telling, why not leave it until you can play it out at the table with the rest of the party? I understand the excitement for telling good stories, but if what you want is total control over your PC and their future, just keep writing that backstory until you have a book, and just play the game for playing the game. 

Fellow DMs, players, I understand the desires that cause the above requests, the interests outside our games that we think would be fantastic to incorporate, or the desire to play a character that is just a little more interesting or powerful. I have been one of those players asking for more and more, and as a DM cannot seem to leave well enough alone to the point I am converting official campaign settings to better suit my taste. However, you have to put this into perspective - is it fair to the other players? To maintain balance, will the DM have to resort to throwing only CR 20+ monsters at the group? Does it fit in with the theme of the setting? Why does the player really want this whatever - boredom, fan of a particular show that they want to incorporate, or just a greedy, munchkin of a power gamer?

I know, it sounds like I hate this player of mine, and he does frustrate me immensely from time to time, but I love his enthusiasm. I remember having the same kind of ideas as a young player, but that was when I was younger than this player is now. I remember my group at the time attempting to play the Diablo conversion of D&D, as we had all been playing that video game since the beta got released... and it was not as fun as simply playing the videogame was. Even back in the day, before high speed internet, the Battle.Net service that Blizzard introduced with Diablo was good enough you could play with your friends, even if you were too lazy to lug your 15 inch CRT (which weighed 30+ pounds) and tower to your friend's for a LAN party. But it was not just the simplicity of getting a multiplayer game together, it was mostly because playing D&D like it was Diablo was clunky, it was unappealing, and it was not as fun as simply playing the video game. Yet, no matter how hard I try, I cannot convey to this player that even if I allowed all of his flights of fancy, he would not find them not even half as entertaining as he thinks they will be. Sadly, the only way to get this through to the player is let them experience it for themself. Now I know what my DMs in the past went through putting up with me.