It’s late. I’ve been watching Andor. Police brutality, total surveillance, prison, torture… My mood is foul. I’m trying to distract myself by writing about running a long campaign.
This might be another short three page section in the rules for Knives, a simple 2d6 rule system that I’d like to use at my table. The OGL mess is making me angry and I don’t think I want to invest too much energy into D&D-like games. Wizards of the Coast, shame on you.
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A campaign is the long game. Maintaining interest over multiple years time can be tricky. In addition to that, you can’t prepare the whole game before it starts. This section helps you run the long game.
The following elements all generate and maintain long term interest:
The long game promises ever changing game-play. Here are some suggested changes you can first foreshadow and then institute:
An example would be a village that suffer from raids by spider goblins. As the party arrives, the villagers beg the party to rid the village of the goblins. If the party succeeds, the villagers will remember. Whenever the party passes through, there is a feast and the villagers sing their song.
To foreshadow this, make a list of a handful of interventions that non-player characters have made, such as: “Thidrek slew the giant Grim sword Nagelring which the dwarf Alberich had made for Thidrek.” It connects two non-player characters that can be met, it introduces an important item that can be gained, it establishes a bit of history of the setting that promises more to learn – this one sentence pulls a lot of weight.
As soon as the player characters have done something similar, have people react to the reputation this engenders. Give players epithets like “dragon slayers” or have people remember how they stole Alberich’s cloak of invisibility. This is the reputation they gain.
Don’t hold back with positive reactions. This is not a valley of tears. The adventure game is entertaining because it allows us to overcome adversity. We are powerless enough in the real world. Let’s not put that into our games for the sake of “realism”.
To foreshadow this, make sure that you occasionally mention how things used to be different. Remember how quickly times change. Here are Celts, they want to move but Caesar conquers Gaul instead. Not long after that, the Romans leave, the Goths come. Then the Franks. Then the Vikings. The Normans. All of that in the span of a few hundred years. Have a list of two or three previous periods to refer to. The invasion of the Huns. The reign of the Völsung.
Make sure these are not periods in the distant past. The era when giants ruled the earth is interesting lore and explains the existence of giant castles, but it doesn’t foreshadow anything unless they’re coming back. Then again, if they are – more power to you!
Another way to foreshadow world changing events is to highlight agents of future change. There are rebels in the imperial capital. There are warbands of the coming invasion. There are refugees from the coming flood. These people show up. There’s that village the party has been to two or three times, and now there’s a refugee camp. Change is afoot!
To foreshadow this, knowledgeable non-player characters are always eager to learn more, willingly part with information they have and are always happy to get updates from player characters. Don’t lock knowledge away. Don’t make sages tight-lipped and cagey. Instead, let them be librarians, always eager to add new books to the library (and place books liberally in your setting). In exchange for books found, librarians divulge more secrets, and place new burial mounds, new ruined castles and new entrances to the underworld onto the players’ map. This is easily combined with “interventions” above: The sages and librarians ask the players to follow up on cues and are grateful when they do. Another virtuous cycle ensues.
An example for such a chain of secrets would be this: The power of the king is due to the riches he amassed → he got these riches from a dragon’s hoard → he got this heard with an invisibility cape → he got this cape from a dwarf king → this dwarf king still lives in Niflheim and has cursed the gold. These chains don’t have to be too long. Five steps is a good start. Make sure to have several such chains.
Here’s another example: The king’s wife used to be a ferocious fighter → she had promised to marry only the one would best her in a wrestling match → the king didn’t stand a chance and had implored his best friend to help him – using the invisibility cape → this best friend then got to marry the most beautiful woman in the land.
Each link in the chain is a secret to be uncovered, each can be an aside learned in an adventure. The adventure is never just about learning such a secret. The secret is icing on the cake.
#RPG #Knives #Halberts