|  Streetline | Oct 25, 2007 6:59pm | I'm having a discussion with my friend right now about the best way to start an adventure, get players involved and role playing (both with NPCs and with each other.) Our D&D group is relatively new and we haven't quite mastered a lot of the techniques to really get good immersion. Our adventures generally start out in a tavern, one of the PCs looks for an NPC with a plot hook, and we go kill things, it's all very MMORPG-ish.
So my question is to all the DMs and GMs out there: How do you start an adventure? How much prep time (if any) goes into your campaigns and plots? How do you get players involved and roleplaying? |
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| | | CastorQuinn | Oct 25, 2007 8:37pm | A lot of experienced DMs will tell you that it's important for a group to start out strangers and to roleplay meeting and beginning to adventure. That way the characters can get a good feel for each other.
In my experience this is the most awkward and forced part of any campaign, where your players try to force their characters to have reasons to get together despite what is typically a wide variety of goals, origins, personalities and skills.
Pre-existing friendships/party
I found the Dragonlance idea far more natural and easier to play: a group of people who already know each other pretty well meet up at an inn at a prearranged time. They have arranged to meet, so you can have that due to a plot hook if you like (eg one of them hears of a threat and calls the rest together for instance). It also allows the players to sort out why they adventure together, and just say that it all happened without having to roleplay it - so you have ready-made friendships (and conflicts, if you have good players). In DnD this is easy: the setting is made for adventuring groups, so just have the characters say they have recently formed an adventuring group, and are now meeting up to formalise/celebrate the undertaking. This way the characters can still know little about each other, just each others' skills and that they appear to share similar (or complementary) goals in seeking adventure.
Fate
The alternative is the Thrown Together By Fate approach. This works pretty well so long as none of the players insist on playing "the dark, brooding loner" (but then, why would anyone play a character who is a loner in a game about adventuring teams? That's just bad character design and bad playing). One good game I played involved a bunch of random strangers happening to be in a pub at the time when a fight breaks out. In the resulting chaos a local prince is killed - it's an assassination, but the assassins blame it on the strangers, who are then branded killers. They need to band together to survive at this point, either to flee the area pursued by guards and the assassins as well, or maybe they need to work together to clear their names. This way you hand the players a reason for their characters to work together, and assuming none of your players are the sorts of dicks who insist that in this situation their character would go it alone (which is, as mentioned, an example of a player building a bad character who should then be written out of the story), this lets them forge a party.
Employment
The third option is for one or more of the characters to hire the others. The classic example of this is the local cleric hiring passing adventurers to complete a quest with him, such as regaining a stolen chalice from nearby monsters. How the party dynamic shifts after this first quest is up to the characters, so they have a good chance to develop.
You could also modify this to have the individuals assembled by an NPC. I'm currently playing the World's Largest Dungeon, and this game started like this. A local dwarf aristocrat who worked for a powerful silver dragon hired us to locate an item of power from a nearby shrine. He approached each of us individually and picked the skills he felt he would need: a barbarian for muscle, halfling for dungeon crawling, dwarven cleric of healing and protection to keep us alive, and a mage who specialised in lost artifacts and ancient history. So long as our character concepts allowed us to be employed to go on a quest, this worked flawlessly.
Trapped
The most deus ex machina of all starting positions, but the most foolproof: trap your characters in a situation where they simply have no choice but to work together or die. Have them wake up in adjacent cells in a dungeon, or have them sequentially fall for a trap that leaves them stranded in a cave that leads deeper into the earth. In this situation even characters of radically different alignments and outlooks will work together, if they need to to survive.
I think one thing to always consider is the characters and the players, and how they would come together. Meeting in a tavern is a cliche for a reason: most characters adventure, and between adventures sit around in taverns looking for new leads. The tavern works great if your characters are stereotypical adventurers who will leap at the chance to follow up a lead and to work with others that they meet. If you have characters that are noble rather than adventurers, this would never work, but giving them a threat that they have a chance to combat might entice them to team up with more mercenary characters who are in it for the money. If the players are driven by money, employ them; if they are driven by fame, give them a challenge that noone has yet managed to achieve; if they are honourable, give them a chance to do good. If they are loners or people who are keeping their heads down - typical of old soldiers, thieves, assassins and dark mages and clerics - then you may need to force them to work together, put them in a situation where they have no choice. If you ahve a mix - as you almost certainly will - you need to mix this up a bit. |
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| | Streetline | Oct 25, 2007 8:48pm | | Awesome advice, CastorQuinn. Out of curiosity, are you the only person that posts on this board? It seems pretty empty. |
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| | | CastorQuinn | Oct 25, 2007 8:50pm | It's not a very active board, but you can see that there are other posters. It's just not often that there are any good questions to provoke discussion.
I'd be interested to see other people's ideas on this. Especially Omnius next time he's around, as he really knows his roleplaying. |
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| | Streetline | Oct 27, 2007 1:34pm | | For anyone interested, I found this site containing lots of good info about RPG theory, getting players to roleplay, and different styles of gaming. I found it very informative. |
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| | | Omnius | Nov 1, 2007 7:18am | My Response, Parts One and Two and Three. Originally posted at AlephGaming.com
Sorry for any formatting problems, I'm always unsure how the boards here resopnd to HTML.
Streetline from StumbleUpon recently posed a great question in the roleplaying forums: How do you start an adventure? How much prep time (if any) goes into your campaigns and plots? How do you get players involved and roleplaying?
I suggest everyone take a look at that thread, if just to read CastorQuinn's response, which is thorough and thoughful.
My personal favorite method of gathering PCs together in a group is the idea of a pre-existing relationship or friendship. The "He's my brother" logic creates the kind of tight bond that is ideal for most adventuring games. Which brings me to the main issue of getting everything started.
In adventuring games, it is ideal to get the game started quickly, with a certain level of trust and cooperation in the group implied, simply for the purposes of getting things done, and making sure the group stays together for the most part, despite various forces driving them in different directions.
In some games, this kind of relationship is the exact opposite of what is desired. The Paranoia RPG, for instance, hopes to create a feeling of strain and distrust between the party members, who are encouraged to keep potentially deadly secrets from eachother, constantly expecting a betrayal.
In story driven games, a cohesive party often isn't appropriate for the course of the game and the story. The players may not all be on one side, or they may be parts of competing sects/factions within a larger unifying force, such as many of White Wolf's Vampire games.
One shot adventures are another story all-together. The group is only, supposedly, together for this one adventure or event, so fate or employment become much more acceptible motivations for working together.
Generally, my favored method of getting characters together at the start of a game is to let the players decide. In all but the most linear of games, or those following the patterns of Paranoia, I allow the players to discuss their concepts as much as desired prior to the game. I feed them information on the starting region and what kind of campaign they are going to participate in, and let them figure out how they belong together.
Generally, the players seem to come up with a good idea, which engages their characters quickly and provides background and/or plot hooks for me to use.
Tomorrow, I'll discuss prep time and getting players involved.
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Most of my campaigns are designed and run in a non-linear fashion so as to give PCs as much freedom as desired in directing the story. As a result, my preparation time is split into two categories: Campaign Preparation, and Adventure Preparation.
Campaign preparation is almost entirely comprised of becoming familiar with the rules, setting, and world that the campaign will be taking place in. Keeping things open-ended and providing the players with a lot of freedom means I need to be at least familiar with everything. While the rules and circumstances don't need to be memorized, I need to understand them well enough that a quick scan will provide me with everything I need.
The rest of campaign preparation is spent talking to the players, and finding out what kind of campaign they want to play, and what kind of characters they're likely to play, backgrounds they're considering for them, and general goals/directions for the characters. This can all change later on, but it puts me on the same wavelength as my players, and helps me make better use of my prep time by focusing it on what will be relevant to the players.
Adventure preparation is what I do before every session. This is where I draw maps, roll up NPCs, prepare stats for creatures they are likely to encounter, and any other preparation that seems necessary for the upcoming session. I also make a point of reviewing any likely points that the players are likely to deviate from what I have prepared, and alternate paths that they are likely to take.
On average, I spend about one hour preparing for every four hours of gaming. This can change depending on how intense the session will be, how much is being recycled from the past, and how divergent the players have been.
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One of the best games I've run, as far as role-playing encounters are concerned, was a game in which the party was returning to a town which happened to be the home town of one of the wizard. The wizard's father, also a wizard, still lived in town, in a sizable house. Needing both a place to rest and eat as well as information, the party went to visit the wizard's father, seeking both.
I never told them the encounter was going to be role-playing heavy, but from the moment they entered the house I only spoke as the father or the GM directed actions, describing environments, etc. When the players tried to jump ahead of the father's questioning and being caught up, he would interrupt them firmly but nicely and continue along with what he wanted to talk about. This forced the players to role-play with him a bit.
This encounter wound up lasting nearly two hours, for the duration of it everyone being in character nearly a hundred percent of the time, simply focusing on dialogue and characterization. There was more character development in that session, and more fun role-playing all squeezed into those two hours than I could have possibly expected before the start of the session. (This encounter also had the added bonus of added impact when the father was later assassinated.)
The lesson I took from this session was that to get players involved, it must be made clear to them, either implicitly or explicitly, that it is in their interest to get involved and participate. As soon as players begin to respond and get involved, it is important to reward that behavior immediately, at least at first, to help cement that it is the proper thing to do and it will make the game more enjoyable for everyone.
Another simple way to get your group involved is to ask them directly what they and their characters want. If you are lucky enough to get usable responses, design the adventure/campaign with these responses in mind. If your players were honest and intelligible, you've probably built in an irresistable hook. |
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|  Thanuir | Nov 25, 2007 1:14am | I'll be starting a game soon, and there are two possibilities. First: You are vikings, or accompany them, as they return from a long raid to the warm lands. Your home is being threatened by a giant. Create characters.
Second alternative: Create modern day chars. They will be in a very strange and potentially dangrous situation. Describe one scene where they interact with someone important to them.
Start will be: You are in a totally white room. There is a dead scientist, or possibly doctor, lying at your feet, with blood everywhere. The only thing you remember is the scene you described earlier.
So, no taverns for me. I start at the interesting bits, or very close to them. |
| How do you start an adventure?
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