Let’s take out the d20 I got at Game Day and do the draw!

Clatter Clatter…. 6

(Consults list)

Tommi from Finland wins! (Oh brother…)

Nobilis, one of my favorite narrativist games, has a “Bonds” system by which a character can screw with another character by assaulting things they care about. When you write down a bond on your sheet, you’re giving the Hollyhock God (GM) explicit permission to mess with you by way of these proxies because it will make a cool story. Without this agreement between the GM and players, some players might feel like they’re being picked on. This system gets the GM and the players on the same page: in favor of a cool story, rife with personal conflict.

2) When a player gives you a hook to hang a story on, use it immediately. Don’t wait until the perfect moment to bring in the NPC mentioned in their backstory, or to dangle something they care about over danger. Make every moment you possibly can relate to what the players have given you.

Think about some of the great, character-based TV shows you’ve seen. Did the pilot hold back, or did it give you a ton of interesting information and situations involving each of the characters? Okay, it’s a leading question–but why not use that idea in your games? Don’t make your players suffer through weeks of content that’s not tied into their characters. Use that backstory from day one.

3) When the PCs are separated, cut between them quickly. Give each player no more than 3 minutes before moving on to the next player. The character should have just enough time to learn one vital piece of information, or to have one interesting conversation, or make one daring escape.

Watch for how writers in other media, like TV shows, deal with multiple character storylines, particularly for how they switch between characters. Often, each character has a scene lasting about a minute, and when the plot has advanced a little, they cut to another character. It keeps a dramatic momentum, and keeps every character at the forefront of the audience’s mind. Use that! A dozen short, engaging situations each night makes for an incredible character-based gaming experience.

So what we did was deliberately NOT create a story arc for the campaign in the beginning, going instead to separate, unrelated single-to-few-session episodes, with different DM’s even. The previous campaign had started the same way, not by design but because of limited DM planning time. We used some published material or total improvisation (like coming up with a hidden temple on the fly when one character declared searching for hidden doors)

Next came the fun part: after running what were basically one-shots for several months, we had a wagon-load of escaped bad guys, found locations and items, and emergent PC personality – the actual stuff, not anything written in a background but not actively shown in play. Now we put every loose thread in a pot together with the more meaningful character backgrounds (some players have a knack of making DM-friendly stuff up…) and cooked together a story arc. Totally random items became central for the plot, and made-up locations started to matter. We started to introduce more loose ends and hints on what the items and events actually meant for the bigger picture. A very rewarding process, and immensely enjoyable for us DM’s.

But a note of warning… We did overdo it a bit, and tried to weave EVERYTHING into the plot which became a monster. And our clues were a tad too subtle for a group that plays quite infrequently and tends to forget the small details that had suddenly started to matter. But the concept of emergent story arc itself was a blast and we are going to try to do the same in the next campaign.

It follows a basic principle.

Wolverine, Storm, Cyclops and Rogue are not just Wolverine, Storm, Cyclops and Rogue.

Wolverine, Storm, Cyclops and Rogue are ALSO the X-Men. Which is a specific group, with specific goals, specific resources and intricate dynamics. If Cyclops abandons the X-Men, he still remains Cyclops but might lose “X-Men benefits”. A cool mansion with cool toys. A wise patron to guide him. All the connections Xavier might have. The X-Men network and so on.

But in D&D, we create a bunch of individuals with no mechanics and incentives towards the group (the party, the company, the fellowship, whatever).

So have the group create the company (party) as some sort of identity. To be part of the company might give perks. It might also have drawbacks. And it might also have requirements.

Each company might have an “alignment”. This doesn’t mean necessarily a D&D alignment but it might be something like “guard the kingdom’s frontier against the unnatural forces of the North”.

A D&D entity should level up. So the company, as an organization, can grow. Each time a character(s) furthers the cause of his company or acts in accordance, add a percentage of his individual XPs earned to the Company’s XPs. When a specific amount is reached, the organization levels up. As a DM, be creative. Give the company new feats. Perhaps it gains new informants, a better reputation with locals. The ear of the court. Perhaps the best weapon smith will now accept to be at their service. Perhaps the mayor of the independent city now allows members of the company to carry arms in ANY city building. Heck, they might even have privileges such as searching houses, making arrests or the like.

Of course, the company will also have enemies. Enemies who might not care about specific individuals but will want to hurt the company should it reach a certain level of importance.

By pumping XPs only when PCs act in accordance with the company, you let them dictate how important the company will become. That’s the beauty of this. Optional: you can also keep track of which PCs pump XPs in the company and thus elect a company leader. Some D&D rules can also be plugged as-in in the entity. The leadership feat comes to mind. Followers not dedicated to the PCs but to the company.

In your post, you were talking about party cohesion: this helped, IME. You were also talking about characterization. This helps too. Because a character by himself is nothing. To reveal the character, you need interaction. More interesting group dynamics lead to focused characterization and is usually revealing.

I’ve tested the rules loosely for three years and it seems to work. I usually make up perks as I go, taking suggestions from players. I follow the XP progression standard for a character in 3e. Recently, I gave the following XPs to the company entity:

Ultimate goal of company: 30%
On the company’s agenda: 20%
Loosely related to the company: 10%
Optional: against the company’s agenda: negative percentage substracted

Example: Tordak kills unnatural creatures defending the northern frontier and earns 1000XP. The DM also adds 300xps to the company.

Don’t be afraid to add things to the company’s agenda. One of the advantages of the company is that its reputation will facilitate sending adventurers on quests. The villagers trying to get rid of a vampire miles away don’t want just any adventurers to help them. They send for THIS COMPANY. Because presumably, the word gets out that they are honest and reliable (or alternatively for an evil campaign, they are cold-blooded, efficient murderers).

Hope that helps! Tweak the concept, it really works

3. I am assuming characters with personal goals created by any suitable method. Definitions: A driven character is one who has very focused goals; conflicted character has (easily) conflicting goals.

As a GM, for every driven character, challenge and attack the goals in interesting ways, which means that the player must be able to do something about the attacks.

In case of conflicted character emphasise the inherent conflicts so that circumstances force the player to compromise some of them.

4. An organisational tip: Have a list with characters and whatever juicy story potential they happen to have. Put a checkmark next to a story seed when it is addressed in play in some significant way. Try to balance the checkmarks so that every character or story seed has roughly the same amount.

Tommis last blog post..There shall be war.

These are meant to drive stories as a part of the system. But then, Ars suggests things like troupe storytelling and arcs that span years– which is not usually the modus operandi for most D&D games.

-Ben.

Bens last blog post..WTF: Excerpts from the new DMG

The cut-away sessions themselves can help drive story, too, creating the situations that the characters might find later. For instance, I had an adventure where they’d rescued a character from a humanoid encampment. Later, we did the cut-away that ended with the character’s capture.

-Ben.

Bens last blog post..WTF: Excerpts from the new DMG

Background– usually 1000xp/page up to about 3 pages, asking the player to look at birthday, family, childhood, education, and how the character arrived at the current class/level. There was a nearly three-page questionnaire I found online that covered all sorts of personality aspects of a character. I ask them to look over that questionnaire and take the questions into account when writing that background. Based on how the background is written, I might award a few skill points of a knowledge skill or an appropriate skill.

Surrounding Area– I ask the player to write a short blurb describing a NPC in the area and the setting in which their character knows the NPC. I’ll offer 250xp per establishment/proprietor combination. This is gives me characters in the area that the players know individually and little details to grow stories around those NPCs. Examples are shopkeepers, bartenders, priests, harlots, bards, soldiers, and the place in town where the NPC is found. For every four of these, I’ll also offer a point of the Knowledge(Local) skill. I usually cap this at about 12.

Using these two methods, I can create connections between characters if I have to, and they’ve increased the setting. By allowing a bullet point format for material, I keep them concise. The xp/gold/skill rewards are a great stick/carrot for drawing out stories, because it means that starting characters who provide me a detailed background and investment in the society are more powerful– and that drives the powergamers to generate material. By capping the benefits I don’t end up with 15 page backgrounds, something I’ve seen happen.

I also highly encourage character sketches, giving another small xp award for the image.

We also have a deck of 50 cards that we draw at the beginning of each session– some have things like “+10% to the next critical” or “I don’t fumble,” but there are ones like:

“Big nothing here” (once used to obviate a trapped chest)
“I cry like a little girl” (once used to get past gate guards)
“I sneeze at an inopportune moment.”
“I am cranky with a terrible headache today.”
“I make a new friend today.”
“I am sick to my stomach today.”
“I find a small item worth no more than 25gp.”

Each has a small xp award, and no one shares their card with anyone, even me. This adds an element of surprise to the session. I sometimes give a card to an important NPC, usually a critical or fumble based one. These cards give the players something that keeps me on my toes, forcing a lot of spontaneity in sessions.

-Ben.

Bens last blog post..WTF: Excerpts from the new DMG

One of my players wanted his bard to have proto-bag pipes, but I reckoned that these would be pretty expensive. So, his bard is always on the run from the goons the instrument crafter hired to collect payments on the pipes.

My own character is a gnomish liberationist, and she’s always running around with her gnome power friends. (Led by Gnome Chomsky, naturally.)

These were nice hooks both into the characters and their backstories, and also into the world in which they live.

One could even suggest that a character have an antagonistic relationship with one group/community/entity, and a positive relationship with another.

David Reeses last blog post..the name of jesus

Let’s see if Chatty’s site wants to eat my post again or if it’s just going to say the anti-spam word is invalid today.

The mule thing is an adventure that Rick_TWA over on Treasure Tables wrote a while back:

http://www.treasuretables.org/forum/index.php?topic=596.0

I still think it’s one of the best ideas for an adventure yet. It’s a great combination of weirdness and humor. But I still haven’t found a way to work it into an adventure…

Thanks for taking the time to post it!

Even though my first campaign was a published adventure, I wanted to somehow find a way to forge the group before they launched into the core adventure. To accomplish this, I did a couple of things.

First, as everyone was discussing their new characters, I tried to get a feel for what everyone wanted to create for their new PCs. I suggested that they maybe should try to create a group template before they started rolling up their characters (thanks Fear the Boot).

Another thing I noticed from the prior campaign was that a number of the players were lewt happy. Using this knowledge, I devised a carrot–each player could get one magical item (approved by the GM) *if* they wrote out a detailed background of their character before the start of the first session. I wasn’t sure if it was going to work, but the gang all came through with excellent characterizations just to get a nymph cloak or ring of resistance. Unlike the previous session, everyone kept to their characterizations through this campaign. I don’t know that I would want to do this for every campaign, but it worked out well in part because we were all still relatively new.

Finally, while we had a rough group template, the group of pc’s didn’t know each other prior to the adventure. The published adventure I was going to GM had a few hooks for getting parties together, but I wanted something a little bigger, something that would help the group gel a little more. While my written solution was a little predictable, the players thankfully threw me for a couple of loops during this prelude, forcing me to improv. This loose session really helped out the campaign. I think that it helped them as players by showing them it was a more open game, which really is the joy of the tabletop (all of them are big videogame players). It helped me by forcing me to learn to do things on the fly. Something about that loose session really worked, and it’s something that has really worked over later campaigns, although obviously the GM has to be able to guide this open session into the real core of the campaign.

I don’t have a lot of GM experience, but with my little group, this combination of preparation and chaos has been a good mix.

As you may know, the top 4 countries that visit this site are the US, Canada, the UK and Australia.

The 5th one is… Germany!

Regardless, you are right that shipping the box outside of Continental North America is going to kill me… I shipped a D&D book to the States last week and it cost me 14$!

Tell you what, if the winner is outside NA (or if they prefer the alternate prize), I’ll make the prize a 15$ gift certificate for drivethru RPG (paid by my ad revenues). You can buy a ton of Planescape products there for 5$ each. (Or Monte’s Beyond Countless Doorways for 13$ which as been hailed as the best Planar product for D&D 3.x)

It can be as simple as ‘My Mum, who’s called Marge and she worries every time I leave home’, but I find it enough to give a little character depth at least.

Chatty – please feel free to exclude me from winning this, I’m sure you don’t want to ship to England.

At the beginning of each session, you have each player draw a chit out of a bag. (You could use some of those magic life counter marble things that are sitting around gathering dust since the innovation of using dice to count things in magic came to the forefront.)
You’ll need four colors of chit (or more. this is an extensible system.)
For our purposes lets say:
30 white chits
15 Black chits
5 Blue chits
and
1 gold chit.

White chits work sort of like the granted power of the luck domain. By turning in your chit you can reroll any one die roll. Unlike the luck domain’s power, this can be done after success or failure is determined. Not a lot of RP potential here.

Black Chits can be used to grant a one time +5 bonus to any d20 roll or to allow you to make an untrained skill check as if you were trained in that skill (so you have a chance to make a check on a trained only skill, and you can do better than a dc 10 success on a skill that can usually be used untrained.)
Here we start getting into things with serious rp and story considerations. A properly used black chit will let a character do something that she would not have usually been capable of. This lets them pull off one time feats of inspiration.)

Blue chits let you do something extraordinary. You can spend it in one of two ways. The first is to allow a player one additional use of any one limited time per day power. Second they can spend it to enable some unlikely feat. “I toss my towel over my head. The beast, being particularly stupid, thinks that if I can’t see it, then it can’t see me and wanders off” or Eight Imperial Guards? Hum… I point at the ground at their feet and say ‘Hey, you dropped your pocket!’ When they look down, I use over run to bull them all over and escape” or really, making any plan that would not be out of place in a caper movie or novel have a reasonable chance of succeeding.
The second one opens up all sorts of neat story possibilities, but only if the players are interested.

The lone gold chit is the only pure story one. You turn in the gold chit in order to get your own story line. It can’t be anything major like “I want the ultimate sword of ultimateness!!1!!” more akin to “I’d like a rival” or “I want a romantic interest” or I want to become the mayor of (Town X)” or even better “I want my friend (NPC) to become the mayor of (Town X)” These don’t happen immediately, and their initialization should be handled between sessions.

You can also use the bag-o-chits to encourage role playing by using it instead of the bonus experience points a lot of gms hand out for exceptional rp or things that make them have to stop so they can quit laughing long enough to breathe

Michael Phillipss last blog post..Geneology, what’s that

http://www.treasuretables.org/forum/index.php?topic=596.0

It’s by far one of the best adventure ideas I’ve heard in a long time. And I still haven’t found the best way to work it in. Maybe when 4E rolls around…

Thanks, I really like all those tips!