Scaling Down
You know what was awesome? The hero shot from Avengers: Endgame. Just look at all those larger-than-life heroes charging across the battlefield. After approximately three thousand films and nine decades of my life, I finally got to see all my favorite characters battling a goddamn alien army in order to save multiple timelines and parallel realities.
But you know what else was awesome? Peter Parker bumming around New York and doing flips on request.
I’m dipping into the Marvel well because today’s comic isn’t really about adorable critter campaigns (although those can be a lot of fun). What I’m really talking about is your campaign’s scope. Whether it’s the world-shaking plot of a BBEG or the relationships between deities in your local pantheon, there’s a tendency among GMs and world builders to start at the grandest scale. It’s only natural to try and top the last campaign by going big. The instinct to improve on your previous work is the hallmark of a good creative, and shooting for bigger and better seems like a natural route. But remember that Endgame was the culmination of a (very) long arc. Peter Parker’s character building montage came at the beginning of his story.
What does any of this have to do with your campaign? Simply this: Go ahead and figure out your cosmic-scale bullshit, but then put it aside. You won’t need it for months and months of game time. Instead, begin by concentrating on the first town. The first inn. The first quest line. This is often called the “bullseye method,” and it’s more akin to the way your players will actually experience the setting. The idea is to flesh out that first circle of the bullseye—the place where the party will actually spend most of their time. You can always expand out afterwards, but you need to establish your world and the characters’ place in it now.
That’s why it’s satisfying to watch Peter Parker being a friendly neighborhood Spider-Man before we see him carrying the cosmic football. There’s just as much drama to be had in going to prom as in saving the galaxy. And to my way of thinking, you need the former before you earn the latter.
So how about it, worldbuilders? Do you prefer starting small, or would you rather skip the small-time stuff and save the multiverse from day one? Let’s hear all about your well-scoped campaign settings down in the comments!
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Scale is something I play with a bit when I write. Not only is it hard to create “The Universe hinges on this moment” stories, it can mess with lots of narrative. For example, if all the shop vendors know you are the destined hero who is the only one who can defeat the dragon lord, why are they charging you for weapons and armor? Why aren’t they heaping stuff to help your chances on you?
No, I draw the line and generally limit my scale to the country the players are in. I find that it gives that same feeling of “we have to stop Lord Squigglesworth the fifth from summoning his dark master” without having strange disconnects.
And of course, in my current Hero High game, Scale is another form of comedy. The same heroes who are fighting a pokemon battle for a mystical wish that could possibly reshape or end the world as they know it are also trying to find a date for prom. Due to an accidental plane-shift (blame the tech genius), they go from fighting against an Omegadrone to then fighting a rivalry battle with one of the “villain schools” to complaining about errant football throws and aliens that don’t add “are you sure” boxes to their dimension hopping suits.
Laurel just joined one of those “Hero High” games as a PBtA campaign. I’ve always liked the anime-inspired stuff for its ability to handle tonal whiplash well. That helps with the scope problem.
With campaign planning, I start big, creating the BBEG first. Then, for the beginning of the campaign, I create an introductory adventure to set the tone of the campaign; it’ll give the players a bit of lore about the world, of what style of game I’m running, and a teeny tiny bit of foreshadowing. Then, I go onto the second adventure, which is completely unrelated to the main plot. After the first two adventurers are done with, then it varies depending on whether the campaign focuses on one plot or has various minor adventures.
I know I link this thing all the time, but have you ever read the covenant of the arcs (pg 77)?
http://www.wizards.com/dnd/files/DM_Experience_2011.pdf
It offers an interesting third option in between “one big storyline” and “lots of episodes.
I often get the urge to just skip early levels simply because the small scale stuff often gets tedious after starting it for the n-th time. Every GM I played with pretty much insists on starting at l
1st level… which is a natural place to start, but so few of those campaigns go beyond 5th level. Groups tend to fall apart at that time.
The looming threat of CR 1 bandits being the strongest thing you fight is scarier than any monster. I tend to err on the side of epicness.
Hey, I’m an Exalted player. There’s nothing wrong with shooting for epicness as a style. The problem is when bandits are just boring, poorly characterized, unmotivated sacks of XP. There’s nothing boring about the 7 Samurai storyline. You’ve just got to put in the effort to make those low-power threats meaningful.
I once tried to create a campaign in reverse; to start with a low-level idea, and create an adventure which would grow into a high-level campaign. So I created a campaign centred around kobolds, and created the outline of a campaign. But alas, one cannot force creativity, thus I never felt particularly attached to it, never having the drive to develop it past the early stages of campaign planning.
That’s too bad. The kobold empire sounds like a fine antagonist to me.
I hope Skitters and Scabby did something to hide their scent, otherwise they’ll have the misfortune of learning the Swallow Whole rules. And Antipaladin will need to bring Patches to the vet (druid?) on account of the ingested poison and diseases.
“Swallowed by a giant monster” is a fine dungeon. What with Patches’s connection to the lower planes, I wouldn’t be surprised if there were vast labyrinths within that poor pupper’s belly.
For dramatic effect, read this comic with the soundtrack of Alien: Isolation in the background.
I wonder where they got that itty bitty rapier and magician’s hat. Druid, or Cleric?
Needle and cloth from Thief’s sewing basket: https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/crafty-thief
We’ve started campaigns as an Independent Delivery Company.
Folks trying to save a small hamlet.
People from literally all walks of life.
People visiting a fair.
Going to travel the world.
Literally visiting a city and stumbling into a weird pokemon (PTU)
Fairly inauspicious starts. The small hamlet was a level 5 start.
I dig the independent delivery company angle. Mostly because it comes with it’s own theme song:
https://i.makeagif.com/media/12-09-2015/nXMxhM.mp4
This is certainly something I struggle with as a new DM. I got my ideas for the big picture plot, but I’m often scrambling to think up sidequests that are engaging.
That’s the thing. The “big picture” isn’t the plot. What the PCs are doing right now, today… that’s the plot.
It’s good to know that wheels are turning in the background, but not at the expense of turning out compelling content right now. I think that’s why the “chain of lieutenants” is such a common strategy. You kill the local boss, find the secret letters from that guy’s boss, and then go up the chain from there. Every boss is a nice nugget of foreshadowing for the next guy without forcing you to dwell on the world-scale plot.
I’m going to be starting a campaign (our group’s main DM… not frequently available, but we’re all very stubborn about finishing that campaign) in which the party will be mercenaries hired by a rich guy to help him with his hobby of acquiring items of interest from various dungeons. After two or three dungeons, they’ll awaken a fantasy version of General Grievous who’ll proceed to be the BBEG with attempts to reform his lost empire.
Solid premise. I always appreciate it when my parties are “professional adventurers.” It makes it a lot easier to motivate them to go adventuring.
As you’ve said, I did need to at least figure out what was going on with the cosmic-scale stuff when I tried to start small and realized “Oh wait, I should probably figure out what this cleric is a cleric of.”
Once that was out of the way, though: You can stay small-scale for quite a while and have it stay fun!
True that. My problem is that I get tunnel vision on the epic finale and wind up phoning in the current arc. Writing today’s comic is an effort to snap myself out of that bad habit.
yeah… don’t get me started at „world changing“ stories.
too many stories turn into „ooooh the Whole World (™) is gonna [insert doom destruction theme of choice] unless thee heroes goeth forth heroically“.
Gotta care about the world before you care about saving it.
yeah, but if nearly every story turns into a „Save The World“ quest it gets old.
Run out of ideas? Threaten to blow up the world, if you’ve done that already: time travel.
I practically always start small.. my biggest problem is often developing past small.. I struggle to do hollywood style action plots.. I’m almost entirely simulationist
While initially it felt a mixed bag, as I was at least good at improv and worldbuilding and blah.. lately I feel a bit burnt out and struggle to come up with stuff as fast as I did when younger.. so I think I’m getting worse as a DM
Naw. You’re not worse. You’ve just got competing demands on your time.
Dude that wrote the Malazan Book of the Fallen series has a great quote on this point:
It’s a great interview…
http://www.steven-erikson.com/index.php/the-world-of-the-malazan-empire-and-role-playing-games/
…And one that helps me to keep my chin up when school work and fiction writing keep me from putting my all into the tabletop.
my sandbox started with Thornkeep of the first PF Online first kickstarter.
A nicely fleshed out village. Has it’s own little dungeon and 8 roughly described dungeon locations, which I spread around the whole forrest. The Elerald Spire ad on has the next bigger town and a bigger dungeon and then I picked up a few modules which I’m using to fill the 8 locations or add to the perimeter.
There is a novel set in the area, which should help with characters.
Every named NPC has it’s own character sheet and quite a few get two digit numbers in class levels.
It’s just a big RL project in the way to finish the design phase. But if I‘m lucky Paizo might just get someone to write up Bastard Hall by then.
Never really looked at Pathfinder Online. How does it work as a sandbox?
never played it.
The „plan“ was to play it and take screenshots for my campaign. But by the time the game went online RL had me too busy to play, so I sold my login to someone who was keen to play.
Well that’s a ridiculously novel idea. I wonder if anyone else has done something similar: re-purposing a video game like a machinema dude as an accessory to an analog game.
A good campaign is like a good anime, you start with some episodes that by little go building the lore and plot before going to the heavy arcs. If we even go for the heavy arcs. Let me give an example:
At the begin of the Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, the Nilfgaard empire have just conquered Temeria. Emperor Emhyr var Emreis, The White Flame Dancing on the Barrows of his Enemies, have taken throne in the occupied capital while he prepares for the rest of his campaign to take all the Northern Kingdoms. They only one able to raise against the black-clad soldiers of the empire is Radovid V The Stern, uniting all of the Northern Kingdoms to strike back at the invaders whit the zeal of the Eternal Fire. He is a merciless king, using the faith and despair of the people to raise his armies and follow his greed for the Redenian domination of the lands of the north, while allowing for all the non-humans and mages to be burned at the stake by the hands of the witch-hunters.
But that isn’t the main story of the Witcher 3, Gary fight for one or another, even killing Radovid is just a series of side-quests, not the main quest chain. The story is about Geralt looking for Ciri and their battle against the Wild Hunt. As a certain web-page about tropes and tv says: “He’s responsible for an unprovoked war of conquest against the neighboring Northern Kingdoms. In any other story, he would be the Big Bad who the heroes have to fight. Here, however, his villainous actions are largely detached from the main narrative involving Geralt and Ciri. If anything, his role is spent helping them.”. The BBEG of another game is here a quest-giver.
Casablanca would also be a good example. The movies is set during the WWII but it’s not about the WWII. That is a conflict occurring elsewhere, the movie is about intrigues that have nothing to do with the fate of any country or a turn point for any side. Is about two fugitives looking to outrun the war and a den of inequity owner who is the former lover of one of the fugitives.
Sometimes things happen be the heroes or not present. And the world is big enough for them to not be in all the places. So while the heroes are fighting the BBEG, another one is rising elsewhere. While the heroes are doing so downtime a war rages. While the heroes are addressing the setting problems in another plane a princess cries for help while his wicked uncle murder her father and tell the guards to prepare the coronation and bring the Wheel of Torture.
Remember there will be always adventures, but the wise hero knows to choose them and let the rest to be someone else problem. Insert here image of the party drinking while a monster destroys town 😛
I like that point about “the big world-shaking plot” being a background rather than a driving force. Sometimes the heroes make it their business to interfere, but I’d be just as happy keeping things local.
What about a campaign in which the “heroes” are interior decorators for the nobles of the kingdom, that got a lot of work now that many lords have go to war and their wives have been left in their manors controlling the finances and without any much to do?
They can change the curtains bring new furniture and struggle against the carpet’s budgets in times of war 🙂
Sounds like a great premise for a comedy game.
Try to secure carpet enough for the floor from the main entrance to the ball room in times of war, no easy feat and really serious businesses. Do you know how much money you need to bribe the custom officers so they stamp that the carpets are medicines? 😛
Mouse Guard sounds like an excellent game setting. I’ll have to suggest that one.
It’s Burning Wheel, right? I’ve never tried the system, but the Mouse Guard premise itself is adorable. Let me know how it goes!
I still think Burning Wheel missed its calling as a Science Fiction starship combat engine. Imagine the melee combat as a capital ship battle where, due to the large size, low maneuverability and tendency to have fixed direction weapons, predicting your opponent is more important than fast reactions. Imagine its Ranged Combat system as a starfighter combat system with the two pilots trying to outmaneuver and outclass each other to get into their best combat situation.
That sounds like a game I would play.
What the deal with the system though? Like… What are the major criticisms? What does it do well?
If you are going to seriously play a campaign in Burning Wheel (The core system, I am unfamiliar with any modifications Mouse Guard may have made), you should build three characters. If you are lucky, the third will live to the end of the second session. Our experience with it was that it is super lethal, and this comes from a group who has played Savage Worlds, Shadowrun and World of Darkness. We ran four test combats to learn the game, and in three out of four scenarios both combatants died. One from being outright killed, and one from infections that could not be treated because the doctor has maybe a 25% chance of actually succeeding and if he does, you may still die. The one scenario where I lived was the ranged combat test and I was just able to outmaneuver my opponent to keep him at a range he couldn’t attack and I could and I never actually took a hit.
Oh, and it basically uses a “perils of the warp” table for magic, but the chance that a demon steps through a portal and eats your mage seems to be higher.
I prefer to make my villains people with evil ambitions rather than apocalyptic forces.
On the subject of today’s comic, one of my favorite stealth encounters was a wildshaped druid vs. the castle’s cat.
I told you the tale of El Gato Grande, right?
…
Yeah I did:
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/christmas-spirits
That mess is a very fun premise.
In family games, my wife would start the younger players out as familiars. They often had (and provided) so much fun during campaigns that more experienced players began to ask for the option.
There needs to be a game called “Familiar.” I’ve been interested in the premise ever since I read this thing:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Night_in_the_Lonesome_October
I’m honestly ok with any size grandness of scale as a starting point, as long as you make sure there’s somewhere to go for the rest of the campaign.
It’s just as fun to be small town kids playing at being mighty adventurers in a locale that doesn’t really need any as it is to start off in some crazy “omg the sky is falling, great heroes on YOU can save us!”
The key thing to me is variety. I don’t want to go from one game of similar type directly to another.
(I mean sorta. It’s weird with play by post where that kind of happens anyway sometimes if a particular system, for example Masks, is going to result in relatively similar styles of games at least at the start.)
Mouseguard does sound fun conceptually. Haven’t looked at the mechanics to know if it seems fun in that way. shrug
Gurren Lagan structure works well: Huge overwhelming boss! Even bigger boss! It’s the size of the planet! It’s throwing galaxies as shuriken!
https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/gurennlagann/images/b/b4/GalaxieShuriken.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20170923103653
You just progress up the scale into the realms of the absurd. But I do think it’s important to remember that the absurd does happen in that progression. When the sci-fi sublime goes plaid, it calls for a very specific aesthetic sense. Like you say: that’s not for every campaign, but I’d be down to give it a try.
This actually hits upon something I’ve been grappling with recently in my game. We’ve hit the beginning of act 5 out of 7, and we’re at a point of low plot tension before we make the climb to the climax just before the final boss battle. The questions have nearly reached their maximum capacity, and we’re gonna start answering them all in rapid-fire procession soon, which should bring all those sweet world-ending consequences into focus for the first time, along with all the battles and the deaths and the cool magic spells, you know, as you do.
But all that is coming up toward the end of this act, and throughout the rest of the campaign. We’re not there quite yet. For right now, I’ve had to bring the tension down, so as to add the foreshadowing, and themes, and character motivations, along with a copious amount of player agency, that are truly going to set up the events that will be playing out through to the end of the story. It’s going to be amazing once it’s all had time to blend, but at least one of my players has expressed nervousness at the whole situation.
Finally, I guess I would say that the bullseye quest design strategy has saved my bacon more times than I can count, both in the narrative way you describe, but also from a mechanical approach as well. My campaign has been very sandboxy, so when my players start uncovering a new area, or after a large change-up, I have each area’s encounters divided almost like a bulleye pie graph, with different questlines representing the different pie pieces, with the most common encounters for each faction or questline at the middle, and the “end boss” of each progression path at the outer edge. When the PCs first arrive somewhere, I focus on building the innermost statblocks first, then build the outer statblocks as those characters become further and further involved.
Have you got an example of your sandbox bull’s eye? I wouldn’t mind seeing the notes on that.
Also of note: How do you reconcile a sandbox — those “copious amounts of player agency” — with something as structured as “act 5 out of 7?”
I keep trying to convince the gm to include side adventures with the familiars, animal companions, and other adopted menagerie, but he never wants to go for it.
Be careful. That “I have an idea that I want to try out” sentiment is the way you become a GM.
But yeah, taking a break from world-saving to plot a cheese heist or whatever could be a welcome change of pace. I’ve heard of people doing flashbacks like this: playing the guards in the doomed town that the party is about to discover. In that way, this sort of maneuver can still enhance the A Plot rather than distract from it.
Have you seen The Witch is Dead? It’s a one-page rpg, free online. The premise is that you are all a witches familiars, randomly rolled. You could be a cat or a frog, or a number of other critters. You also each have a cantrip, that isn’t powerful but is useful for household chores, it’s really quite cute.
Of course as the name suggests, the witch is dead. But there’s good news! The witch hunter slayed her only this morning, and legend says if you carve out the eyes of a witch’s slayer and leave them by her corpse during the next full moon, she’ll live again. But hey, even if that’s false, at least you’ll kill the guy.
It’s incredibly small scope. Most of the adventure is getting to the slayer and finding a way to gang-murder this guy like a proper group of murderous critters. The stats are quite clever, and there’s a “danger” gague that goes up as you attempt daring and dangerous feats, which basically puts a soft limit on shenanigans.
I advise anyone to check it out. It’s free!
I played a game of Fine Familiars (google it) for a one shot. Very abstract, lots of fun, but also a severe exercise in improv. The very nature of the randomly changing abilities makes it all but impossible to craft a tale that is a customized experience for your players unless you literally customize it on an instance by instance basis.
I ended up rolling Fiends in Hell on a Heist for Cash, but navigating Cunning Obstacles/Traps to get to it. I ended up using the rough plot of the Goonies (treasure hunt is KIND of like a heist) and it ended up working really well, though I think the Goonies references were lost on them (younger age and different countries make for very different pop culture references/nostalgia)